1 Corinthians chapter 15, and we'll be reading this morning, verses 25 through 49. Here is the infallible, inspired, inerrant Word of God. Someone will say, well, how are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come? You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And that which you sow does not sow the body, which is to be but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives you the body just as He wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own. All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another flesh of birds, and another of fish. There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one, the glory of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars, for star differs from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So also it is written, the first man Adam became a living soul, the last man became a living spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, then the spiritual. For the first man is from the earth, earthy. The second man is from heaven, as is the earthy. So also are those who are earthy, and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly. May God add His rich blessing in the reading of His Word. Let's ask for Him to help us understand. Our God in Heaven, shine within our hearts the pure light of Your divine knowledge, and open the eyes of our minds that we may comprehend the message of the Gospel. Instill in us reverence for Your commandments, so that as we conquer sinful desires, we may pursue a spiritual life, a doing and thinking those things which are pleasing to You. This we ask through Jesus. Amen? You may be seated. You know what? This will be the first time I've pulled this out of my back pocket. But I can tell you this morning as I stand before this passage that I again express my sympathies with the Apostle Peter who said in a moment of great candor and honesty that the Apostle Paul often speaks things that are hard to understand. I've got to say, so many times through studying through this book of Corinthians, and we've been here well over a year and a half now, I have looked at a passage and I've said to myself, I'm glad that's over, because that's the hardest passage I've ever had to expound, figure out, and then explain. And wouldn't you know it, just the next week you have another one that's just as hard, or maybe even harder than the one before. We noted that last week when we looked at verse 29, where the Apostle talks about being baptized for the dead. And I told you then, that passage is on the top 10 list of the Bible's most difficult passages to interpret. And then we come to verses 35-49. And I'm sure as you tracked with me as I was reading this passage, you saw that this is a hard text. And you might be thinking right now, oh no, here we go again. And one of the temptations we might just have this morning, because we have been through so many of these hard texts, is to just shut down, check out, and think about our to-do list. And I want to plead with you this morning to not do that. I do. I want to plead with you at the outset of this message to not check out. I promise I have taken great pains to do everything I can to understand this passage accurately and to think about how to explain it to you as clearly as I can. Now, it'll be different for other people here this morning, but I'm going to promise you that I'll try really hard, and you can ask me questions after the Second Service this morning where you have an unclarity. But I want to challenge you to hang on with me this morning, if for no other reason than because my professor of New Testament at Westminster Seminary said, this is the most important passage in all of the Bible. 1 Corinthians 15.45. Yeah, see, you all looked down, didn't you? You said, whoa, I missed that verse. It is the most important verse in the Bible, he argued. Now, maybe that's up for debate, but I'll tell you what, it's right up there in the top five list of the most significant, searching, coherent, systematic passages in all of the Bible, which sort of just put everything together. And it's amazing how the Apostle Paul sort of squeezes that all into a terse, short verse. And it's packed. It's packed with the substance of the Christian message. Now, just one other thing I'd throw out here this morning, too. I know that we've been challenged mentally and spiritually in a very good way, working through 1 Corinthians, but it's been hard. And so, for that reason, I've decided when we finish 1 Corinthians, that's not very far away now, because we're really in the homestretch after we finish this off. that we're going to go study the book of James for a while and understand ancient wisdom for modern struggles. And I trust you that that will be clear, but it'll be challenging because we'll have a whole new set of ideas to think about in terms of the Christian life. So that's just sort of a teaser, if you will. and hopefully we're encouraged to stay with the passage. Now, before we begin to expound this passage, just sort of give you an overview and some quick bullet points, okay? This is the big picture that's going on in verses 35 to 49, and you can just sort of tuck these points away, and you'll see that we'll talk through them in the sermon. And the first big picture item here is that this text is a response to questions. Now, you can see that very easily for yourself. Look at verse 35. He says, someone will say. Okay, there we are. Someone's saying this. Now whether it's a group of people in the Corinthian church, or whether it's a group of people that brothers and sisters in the Corinthian church are engaged in dialogue with in Corinth, or whether the Apostle Paul, realizing the problem of the Corinthians, came up with these questions on his own because he realized they're good questions to ask to help sort of unravel this truth. Different ways of looking at that, and I don't think you have to decide on one option or the other. But you can see here, this entire passage from 36 to 49 is a response to two questions. How are the dead raised? How can that be? That's one thing he has to answer. How could it be that a dead person comes forth to life? And the second question is, well, what's the form? What does it look like? And I just want to warn you up front, that as Paul answers those two questions, be careful not to sort of get stuck in a mindset, you say, okay, here in this verse, or in this phrase, he's answering that question, and over here he's answering the question about what is the form. Be careful with that. Because Paul's answers are so complex and so coherent that they sort of do double duty. They answer those questions at the same time, in a sense. And we'll kind of talk through that as we work on the passage. Now, the other thing that the Apostle does, which I think is very helpful, is he gives us some hands-on concepts from everyday life that help illustrate the principles in this passage about bodily resurrection. They're very practical and they're fascinating. So he's going to give us some practical ideas from the world of nature that help us kind of see how the dead are raised and with what form. Then he is going to make the main argument of this passage, which is this. that the body, the human body, is adaptable to an eternal relationship with God in a resurrected future state. That is the huge idea of this passage. The idea you can't miss in this passage is that Paul is saying, yes, the human body is adaptable to that condition of that state. He's going to show you how. And then finally, the apostle is going to show us, just in glimpses, what is a resurrected body? What does it look like? Not in terms of a picture, but sort of what's its nature? And that's spiritual. We'll have to explain that, OK? So there's some big bullet points. And I'm looking around to see if we followed. You with me so far? Those are big ideas. Now let's explain them. Our first point that we want to make this morning is this. Paul says the human body is adaptable to a future, eternal existence. Now remember, what Paul is going to say here, beginning with verse 36, is a response to the questions. How is it raised, and with what form? You know, somebody's asking the question, so he, as a good pastor, is explaining that. Now, how does he do it? That's the key. Well, he does it by sort of taking the Corinthians on a field trip. He takes them on a field trip, as it were. You know, I always thought when I was a kid that the best day of school was the day you didn't have to go to. The second best day of school was the day where there was a game, so you had that to look forward to all day. And the third best day to go to school was when you went on a field trip. And here the Apostle Paul takes the Corinthians on a field trip, and first of all, he takes them out to the farm to show them and talk with them about agriculture. And you see that in verse 36, he says, fool. Now I'm not going to deal with that, because it's fascinating that Paul thinks that his arguments are so clear here and so obvious to anybody who's paying attention that they should get it. So he starts out by saying, you're a bunch of blockheads because this should already be answered in your own thinking. He says, it should have been answered in your own thinking if you just thought a minute about this whole process of planting a seed into the ground. Because here's his argument. He says, this is what the resurrection is like and this is how it can happen. He says, it's just like a seed. You put that seed in the ground and what happens? It decays. Now, that's important, because the Corinthians are saying, how can the body enjoy an eternal experience with God in a resurrected state, if the body decays? You can't have a decaying body that's suitable for a future bodily existence with God. That's the problem. And Paul said, just think about it for a minute. What gets put into the ground? A seed that decays. And then he said, what comes up? Well, the answer is obvious. Paul says, it's fitted with its own form and shape. Now, you could look at the seeds and it's hard to tell by looking at the seeds. In fact, it would be impossible to tell. If you put a particular seed in the ground, that it's going to come up and have a particular shape. I'll guarantee you that. I remember this from the time I was a little kid. We used to have a garden outside of our house. And I put a little tiny seed about that big into the ground. And I didn't know anything about pumpkins really other than that they were big and that you have them for Halloween. But I put a little teeny tiny seed in the ground and sure enough, it starts coming up six weeks later. And it's about this big. But I had no idea that by the time that seed grew to its final shape, it would be a whopping 65 pounds and the winner of the pumpkin contest. I didn't know that. That's what he's saying. You see here, the resurrection of the body is like this. You put a dead body into the ground, but what comes out? Well, it's not dead and decaying. It's something marvelous. That's what he's saying. You put this little seed in the ground, and it comes out a giant stalk of corn. It comes out a 65-pound pumpkin. It comes out a watermelon. Or like this, an acorn. We used to have acorn trees out the back of our house. They're about that big. The deer like to feed on them. The cows like to feed on them. Things like that. They're just tiny little things. And this sort of illustrates what Paul is talking about. Because if you look at an acorn, you'll never say, I'll guarantee you, within just a few years, that acorn is going to look like that magnificent, majestic oak tree. Now I think we have a lot of oak trees around here. I could be wrong about that. I'm not an expert on Southern California because we're from the north. California. You know, it's a different state up there. And they've got a lot of huge oak trees in the valley. And you'd never guess it, but sure enough, if you put an acorn in the ground and you cultivate it and you water it, it will eventually, by the laws of providence and nature, turn into a majestic oak tree. That's precisely what Paul is saying. don't determine the body in a future state, and whether it's possible, based upon the fact that you put a dead body in the ground, decaying, which eventually rots and returns to the soil. He said, don't evaluate the possibility of resurrection, or even the possibility that there is a body which is suitable for an eternal existence of God, based upon the fact that we just put this body into the ground, and it disappears. See, there's your issue right there. Paul's saying, don't judge it by that. And why is it, Paul says, that you can put this little old seed in there and it decays and turns into a 65-pound pumpkin? Well, look at verse 38. God gives it a body, just as He now should be powerful than wished. Because it literally means determines. Or as he willed. You see, guys, you have to understand something. That little seed, it's not logical in a sense that you put a tiny little seed in the ground and it turns into something like this. But he said, here's the reason why it happens. It's because if you put that seed in there, God clothes it to be this certain way on the surface after it grows up. And He has ordained this structure in this way of things occurring by virtue of His sovereignty in creation. Now, he goes on from there, to go from the agricultural field trip to the zoo. Because he illustrates the same principle from a different way. At the end of 30a, he says to each seed, he gives its own body. And then verse 39, he transitions from the farm to the zoo. He says, all flesh is not the same. There's one flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another flesh of birds, and another of fish. It's as if He walks you by all the different exhibits at the fair or the zoo, where there's all these different animals, and He said, if you just take a moment to observe, they're not all the same. Some creatures have four legs, and they walk on them. Others have two wings, and they fly. Or others don't breathe in a normal way, and don't live outside of water. They're fish, and they swim and live within water. And he says, God has fashioned all of them this way. He's clothed all of them with their own body, their unique characteristics. He's made them this way. Well, that's the hands-on concept of the resurrection. He said it's just as simple as that. Just as simply as God has the power to fashion different bodies for different kinds of animals. So he has the power to fashion the resurrection body. Now, be clear, Paul is building his argument for resurrection based upon the sovereignty of God and creation. If you take that out, you just ripped out the foundations which are underneath the gospel. You see, Paul is arguing, in a sense, birds don't have wings because they realize that it would be the most helpful tool in the process of natural selection to help them survive against predatory animals. He's arguing that it's not the case that some animals are fashioned with four legs and have great speed and dexterity and ability to move because they realize that would give them a natural advantage. No, he did this according to his will. He ordained that the world would be this way. He clothed different animals with different functions, different capacities, different organisms. Well, he moves from the zoo to the planetarium, though. Look at verse 40 and 41. It's always fascinating to go to the planetarium, where you sit in those very comfortable movie chairs, and they recline backward, and you look at the ceiling, and they paint the stars above there in lights. It's really quite fascinating. Paul now takes you into the planetarium, or out below the stars at night, and he says, look at the stars! Look at the majesty of the heavens. Look at how each star is fashioned with different glory than another star. Look at the moon and the brilliance of its soft light versus the sun with the power of its rays. They're all fitted with different kinds of glory. But notice the assumption behind this. They are all glorious. That's true. There's no one who denies that. You could be the most cynical, secular, pagan, unbelieving skeptic, but you can't look at the stars and say, ah, big deal. Nobody does. Nobody looks at the stars and says, ah, bored with that already. That's a nothing idea. Everybody is amazed at the stars. They're glorious. Paul is going to say the same thing about the resurrection body. If God could fashion all of these diverse bodies in the heavenlies, with all of these differing kinds of characteristics, features, which underscore and radiate and manifest their glory, then He can do that with a resurrection body. Now, I know that's what Paul was doing because of verse 42. I'm glad everybody just looked down, because you see it yourself. If you have a New American Standard version, which is going to be helpful for you if you want to follow my exposition, he says what? So also. That tells us, he's saying, all that stuff we just talked about, that field trip where we went to the farm, the field trip where we went to the zoo, the field trip where we went to the planetarium, plug it all in here when we're talking about the bodily resurrection, because it's just like that. And now He gives you a series of examples, as He contrasts two different kinds of bodies. Now, what you have to see here is He says, So also is the resurrection of the dead. He says, It is sown. That word, It is sown, is the same verb that you find in verse 36, where it talks about sowing of seeds, and also in verse 37. You say, so what, Pastor Sattel? Well, so what is this? By repeating the verb in verse 42, he's saying, you see, the resurrection of the dead is just like the process I told you about when we went out to the farm. You put a decaying body into the ground, the seed, and it turns into the life that God clothes it with. He says that's a resurrection. He says, here's what happens. You sow a body and it's perishable. It's true. It's perishable. You put a dead body in the ground, and it decomposes. It does exactly what God said it would do in Genesis chapter 3. He says, the body is going to go right back to the dust of the earth from which I bring it. That's a curse. And it happens. It's going to perish. It's characterized by living under curse. It's dominated by that covenant word, that sanction that God imposed upon Adam and upon all mankind who were represented by Adam in that covenant. They're all cursed and they're all going to be perishable. That's what Paul is saying here. So there's that body. It goes into the ground. But guess what? He says there's an imperishable body. It's raised imperishable. In other words, it's raised with immortality. It's raised without being under this curse anymore. Now, you can follow the rest of the contrast out yourself. It's not very hard. Verse 43, same idea, just from a different angle. It's sown in dishonor. And by the way, Greek culture really found death to be extremely distasteful. Now, that's not unique to Greek culture in general. That's pretty common. But the way they dealt with it sort of underscored their hatred and their fear and their anxiety about it. Because as soon as a body died, man, they were stuffing that thing in a grave. Because the smell of a rotting corpse made them think about how badly they detested death. That's what Paul is saying here when he's saying the body is sown in dishonor. That's exactly what he's getting at. He is dealing with a real Greek problem and a conception that these Corinthians have been faced with. And he says, yes, it's sown in dishonor. But then on the other side he says, it's raised in glory. It's sown in weakness, right? Well, I'll tell you what, you can't look at a corpse and not think of weakness. You can't. One minute that body is breathing and it's alive, and the next minute it is dead, lifeless, cold, steel, powerless. You can't miss that when you see a dead relative or friend. You cannot do that. It's weak. You can command it all you want. You can give all the instructions in the world you would like to. It makes no difference. It's weak. It's been trapped in death. There's no life in the body when the soul departs. But guess what? The flip side, Paul says, is raised in power. Verse 44, restating the same truth, but it's giving us some categories to work with. It says it's sown a natural body, it's raised a spiritual body. That's really the contrast that Paul wants to get to, because that answer is now form. What form? Remember that's a question posed in verse 35. In what form do they come? Well, Paul says, you have the form of a natural body due to your connection to Adam and the sin nature you inherited and the covenant curse you're under. But here's the resurrection body. Spiritual. We're going to unfold what that means later in the message this morning, so let's not get ahead of ourselves, but just realize that's where Paul is aiming at. And then he says something that provides a profound guarantee that there will be a bodily resurrection. Look at the end of verse 44. The first word should be if. Y'all see that? If. If. There is a natural body. There is also a spiritual body. That if is the guarantee. No uncertainty is being communicated. It's not a hypothetical situation. It's called a first-class conditional clause in Greek grammar. And that if, when it communicates a fact, is underscoring a guarantee. And Paul says, if there is a natural body, is there a natural body? Do bodies die? Do they decompose? They look weak when they're trapped in death. Well, these are all obvious common sense questions we can answer. There's a natural body, right? We've all been to funerals. We know this. But look at it. He says if there's one of those, there is a spiritual body. You can't get out of the logic. You see that? You're trapped in the logic of Paul's argument. He says to those Corinthians who are entertaining some doubts because they've had speculative ideas planted in their thinking, he says, do you have a natural body? Have you wept over the grave of a friend or a loved one? It's self-evident. And he says, there's a spiritual body. That's guaranteed, people of God. That's guaranteed. God is going to fashion a body which is suitable for a resurrected state and an eternal existence with God. So, remember, our first big point we said we're going to take on this morning is this. The body, the human body is adaptable. to a future existence with God. Remember that? And we just proved it from the Word of God. Paul says, if there is a spiritual body, there is a natural body. If you missed everything else about the field trip and how it all ties in, we can talk about that later. But you've got to get to the bottom line of Paul's argument here. It's in 44B. He says, if there's a natural body, and there is, there is a spiritual body. So the body is adaptable to this. takes away one of their, one of the things they're concerned about, one of the things that they're uncertain and they're thinking about, where they, where they, that has been eroded a little bit. Now, here's the second point. Paul unfolds the mechanism. Paul unfolds the mechanism for how it can be that there is a spiritual body. It's a mechanism that accounts for this change from natural to spiritual. That's in verse 45. You might notice in the beginning of verse 45, you have those words again, so also. That means he's looking right back to what he just said in verse 44b. If there's a natural, there's a spiritual body. So also, it is written. You see, he's explaining to you now why it is that way. So also. Well here's the reason, or you could just substitute this. You could say, here's the reason why that's so. Okay? If that helps you frame it that way and you're thinking, Paul is saying that in verse 45. Here is the reason why there's a natural body, yes, but also a spiritual body. Now what's his argument? Well, here's the huge, one big idea that we like to talk about as Reformed people. And if you've been around theology nerds in the Reformed church, you know what this word means. Covenant theology. This is one of those ideas we like to talk about. We like to talk about election, limited atonement, and perseverance of the saints, and the church, and the sacraments. But we often like to get down to this discussion, covenant theology. And the reason why we talk about covenant theology is because 1 Corinthians 15.45. And also 1 Corinthians 15, 22, and Romans chapter 5, and so forth. Yeah, I get all that. But you see, here's the reason why. Because these passages make it plain that God is dealing with humanity through two different people. Adam and Christ, second Adam. You see that in your passage? There's the first man, Adam. And there's the last man, Adam. See that? The reason why we talk about covenant theology, we debate about covenant theology, is because it's in the Bible. You have to believe it. God is dealing with mankind through these two people. Now, I'll guarantee you that He dealt with you through the first Adam. Look at what it says. The first man, Adam, became a living soul. God is talking here, or rather Paul is talking here about the special creation of Adam. And I want to come back and hit that in just a moment. But it's very clear. He says the first man. And the reason why the first man took a first breath and took a first step is because God did something. It says He became a living soul. He was given natural life. Now, the reason why everybody after that receives natural life and living breath and so forth is because God gave it to the first Adam. So that proves the first point. There's a natural body. Why? Well, because he gave natural life to Adam, and he is dealing with humanity through the Adam, and these are the characteristics that those who descend from Adam will bear. But the key to this passage and why it underscores assurance of resurrection is the word became. Okay? Became. The first Adam became. The point of comparison between the two Adams in this passage is what happened to them at a specific point in time. At a specific point in time, Adam became a living soul, and at a specific point in time, the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. Everything hangs on that. There was a specific point in time, according to Genesis chapter 2, that God got down on His knees and He fashioned this big, giant mud pie. And then the word of God tells us that he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. There was a moment when Adam was nothing but a mud pie, a statue shaped just like a human being, like Pinocchio. And then there was a moment when the lights went on. When God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Before that, He was not the man. And after that, He was never the same again. Same thing is true with Christ. That's what He's saying here. There was a moment, there was a point of transition, there was a specific instance when Christ became the life-giving Spirit. Because of that, there is a spiritual body. Well, one of the hard parts about this passage, which makes it so difficult, is that it seems like Paul has squeezed toothpaste back into the tube. He has compressed his argument down so tight here, it's so fine. You need other scriptures to figure this out. You can't just look at this verse and say, oh, I know exactly what happened. Because you can't. You need the rest of the Bible to help you interpret this phrase, so that you know what it means when Paul says that Jesus became a life-giving Spirit. Let me take you to a couple passages that unpack that for you. The first one is Romans chapter 1. Romans chapter 1. I can hear by the turning of the pages of the Bible in here that some might have checked out, and I need you to go there with me so you can understand for yourself where this comes from in the Word of God. Romans chapter 1. verses 3-4, and we don't have to spend a lot of time here, but you can see it for yourself. What Paul is doing here is he's setting up some contrasts. And these contrasts have to do with Jesus. And we're told, concerning his son, that's the verse 3, very first phrase. Concerning his son. Now here's what Paul says. Who was born of a descendant of David. Then look at the very first phrase of verse 4. Who was declared to be the son of God with power. Okay? You have two contrasts here set up. They both pertain to Christ. He's descended from David. He's declared to be the Son of God. Those are two successive stages in Christ's earthly experience. Look at the second phrase in verse 3. We're told that He was born of a descendant of David. Now, you see something else there. According to the flesh. Now that's going to be contrasted with the last part of verse 4 where it says, according to the spirit of holiness, or according to the Holy Spirit. You see the two contrasts. So you have two successive stages which have their own qualities. You have this phase of life which is descended from David, and what qualifies that particular experience of Christ is that it was according to the flesh. It was that period of weakness. It was that period of being made subjected to death. Now if Christ didn't go through that experience according to the flesh, not that he sinned, but if he didn't take on a human nature and a body just like ours that was susceptible to death, you cannot be a Christian. See, this is critical. There's no way for anybody to be saved unless Christ identifies with us in every way except for sin, so that He can die for us. That's what He's saying. He had this experience. He was descended from David, and it was according to the flesh. And how did that end? Well, it ended in the cross. It ended in death. It ended in exactly that process that the Apostle Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 15. A seed planted in the dirt. But here's the thing you can't miss about the contrast. That's the first stage. And here is the second. Verse 4, He's declared the Son of God with power. When? In the resurrection of the dead. You see, he enters into a whole new state of existence now, because all of a sudden, that body is brought to life. It is quickened. And he tells you how. It was according to the Holy Spirit. He's saying right here, what he says later on in the book of Romans, that it was the Holy Spirit who quickened, who vivified, who energized, who brought to life the body of Jesus Christ. At that moment, he became a life-giving Spirit. Just like in the case of Adam. Remember, I told you there was this part of Adam's life. Well, not his life, because he wasn't alive yet. He was a mud pie! Boom. As soon as God blows into him the breath of life, what happens? He became a living soul. Before that, he wasn't a living soul. This is the same thing that the Apostle Paul is saying. Here is Jesus. Lo, they laid Him in the grave. You remember the hymn? Dead. He became. the life-giving Spirit and the power of the Holy Spirit. Y'all get that? That's the only text I'm going to turn to this morning. You can ask me about other passages. I don't want to miss that point. I don't want to cloud your thinking any more than is necessary. I want you to get the point. This is how it can be, people. Come back to 1 Corinthians 15.45 and look at it yourself. This is how it can be. There's a natural body. There's a spiritual body. There's a body that's fitted to this age, the natural body. There's a body that's fitted to the next age. Spirit body. Spiritual body. Here's how it is, because Adam, he became a living soul. And what happened to Adam happens to you. And then there's second Adam. There's last Adam. And he became a living spirit at the resurrection when the Holy Spirit filled him and transformed him and formed such a close, inseparable identity with Christ that now he's called the life-giving spirit. I understand now why Dr. Jones said this is the most important passage in all the New Testament. There's so much theology that is packed into just one clause in this verse. You could fill up a bookshelf full of books to explain it. That's how dense and yet rich it is. Here's the covenant head, Christ. He became the living spirit when his body was raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit. What happened to Christ, people of God, happens to you. That is the logic of the Bible. Over and over again you'll see the Apostle Paul doing this. He will say that when Christ was nailed to the cross, you were nailed to the cross. That accounts for how it could be that God judged your sins in Jesus Christ. The reason why is because you were there. And he also says that when Christ was raised from the dead, you were there. And when Jesus was exalted to the heavenly of heavenlies, you were exalted with Him. You see, we've experienced the foretaste of it, that there's an unfolding of that in history. There's an unfolding of that at the end of the age, and we'll talk about that next week in verses 50-58, when it all happened. But that's it. What happened to Christ? He became a life-giving spirit. You are going to be enlivened by the Holy Spirit and made a spiritual body. That is a body which is in perfect sync with the Holy Spirit. And that's going to happen to you. through Jesus. Now there's two things I want to say here quickly before we move on to our final point. I know we're going long this morning, but again, if this is the most important passage in all the Bible, we could go just a little bit longer, I think. So if you'll indulge me, please do that. First point, number one, there is a guarantee here of bodily resurrection. That's why Paul brought it up. Christ becoming the Living Spirit guarantees There's bodily resurrection. Just as He became quickened by the power of the Holy Spirit, so you will be quickened by Christ through the Spirit and made alive. And the certainty of that is rooted in this comparison between the Adams. Just as certainly as you have a sin nature and you die because of Adam, And that's true, right? I don't think anybody's going to argue that point with me, right? Every single person who's ever lived under the face of this sun throughout all of time has what? They died. Nobody even argues about that question. You couldn't even get an unbelieving friend to argue with you about that question. Everybody dies. Everybody decays. Everybody's a sinner. Guaranteed. It's because of your relationship to Adam. But if you're in this Christ, the second Adam, the same guarantee applies. What happened to him happens to you. That's a guarantee of the resurrection. You couldn't make it any more profoundly certain than that. I don't see how you can come up with a better argument. Nowhere. What happened to Christ, what happened to you? Because it's modeled on Adam, his covenant headship. Second thing I'll say here, and I guess I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it because time is slipping, but I just wanted to tell us here that the special creation of Adam by God is the foundation for all this. If Adam has life because he evolved from lower forms of life, this is done. There's no guarantee. If Adam is, or mankind is, what natural scientists tell us, that he is simply the product of the processes of evolution, specifically through the means of natural selection, there's no gospel. Because Paul interlocks the special creation of Adam with Christ and the gospel. He compares what happened to Christ to what happened to Adam. And this had to have happened with Adam, or it doesn't work over here on the other side of the equation. It had to be that at one point Adam was not alive, he wasn't existing as a being, and he became a living man. That's what the text says. Same thing is true with Christ. There had to be a moment in which he wasn't life-giving spirit. It's modeled on what happened to Adam. Brought to fulfillment now in Jesus. He became the life-giving spirit. We have to insist upon the special creation of Adam. It is part of the biblical worldview. It grounds and provides the foundation for the gospel of Jesus Christ and the certainty of resurrection. Well, our last point this morning. See, our second point was, what accounts for this resurrection change? Well, you found it, because what happened to Christ ensures there's a spiritual body, ensures this resurrection will happen to you. Finally, what's the resurrection body like? And you know what? We can tread real lightly here, because we're just going to come back to this next week anyway. But simple, he says spiritual. That's what he says, there's a spiritual body. And he also used another word, heavenly. Without going into a lot of details, Ask yourself one question. When Jesus was raised from the dead, and your body is going to be like His, because the Bible tells you so, was He raised a man with a physical body? Yes, He was! That's what He says! Luke chapter 24, He comes before His disciples, and He says, See Me! He says, Touch Me! And he says, does a ghost have hands and feet? That's self-evident. No. And then just to top it all off, what did he say? I'm hungry. Do you have a fish sandwich? That's it. There's an identity between the body that was placed in the grave and the body that resurrected. There's no way that Paul would have said, or rather Christ would have said, look at my hands and my feet. He's the same one that got nailed to the cross. There's an identity, but there's newness here because now He's quickened with power. He's glorified, if you will. in sync with the Holy Spirit. So having a spiritual body doesn't mean that you're going to be an angel, sort of just hovering on a cloud somewhere, strumming a harp, with a bodiless existence. No. What Paul is arguing is the spiritual body, there's a continuity between that and the natural body, but now it's not only physical, but under complete conformity and dominance by the power of the Holy Spirit. It's adapted for the new age of existence that will come through Jesus. Paul guarantees us that will be ours. He guarantees that will be ours. Philippians 3, verse 21, he says, Christ will transform the body of your humble state into conformity with the body of His glory. See that? He will do it. He will conform it. And He'll do that by the power which He uses to bring all things to Himself. That's where we're ending. Because there's no better place to end because there's no better argument. Jesus will transform our bodies, quicken them, raise them, and fit them for life in His kingdom. We know that because of the emphatic assurance of 1 Corinthians 15, 44b-45. If there's a natural body, there's a spiritual body. There is a natural body because Adam became a life-giving soul. There's a spiritual body because Christ became a life-giving spirit. That's airtight logic. That logic is rooted in real historical events. Adam became a living soul. Christ became a life-giving spirit in his resurrection. Those are realities that our faith and our hope are rooted in. God help us to embrace them with our whole heart. Let's pray.